White Blank Page
by Phoebe Dynamite
Summary: They each have their ways of penning the story of them.
1. Chapter 1

**For JeuxDeVagues, who made Kate Beckett a writer.**

_And confess your love, your love_

_As well as your folly_

_And can you kneel before the king_

_And say I'm clean, I'm clean_

__ - Mumford & Sons

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><p>She can't avoid their faces as she finally turns around from the spot she feels rooted to and hastily grabs up her stuff from her desk with numb fingers, but she can avoid home. At least for now. She could stay, be with these people she trusts, but she knows she would never be able to bear the weight of the pity in their eyes. It is enough that their stares cut like blades as she shoves her index finger against the elevator button, the careless hurt it produces quickly rushed away by her insides' act of arson against her skin, the cave-in that threatens her knees. She makes herself breathe and blink away the gleam in her eyes, and by the time the elevator finally arrives, she is sure there is no remaining evidence, however briefly it existed, of the ache that exploded in her heart when she realized that what she wanted to say was never going to find its way out of her mouth. She is a brave woman at an interrogation table, or running after a suspect down an unknowable alley, but not even she can be brave enough all the time, even when it counts.<p>

She mechanically puts her car in drive with no clear understanding of how she got to the garage that fast, shuts off the radio before it even has a chance to offer her a song. She sees her empty, perfectly lovely, newly rented apartment and feels this discomfort like she drank too much but not enough to be pricked by the merciful bite of drunkenness. She sees her aloneness, the thing that usually greets her lovingly after a closed case, but she hears him saying goodbye as he walks away from the Precinct, from _her_, with another woman.

She had been so sure this time.

She shakes her head, jams the gear into reverse a little too harshly, and pulls out on instinct, without even looking in the rear view. But it doesn't go away. It's like her nerves have been doused with water and then fried by a jolt. She tells herself it doesn't hurt, but it does, because she had been certain that all of those moments with him had not only actually meant something to her, but to him, too. They had left surprisingly lasting impressions, beyond faint amusement and impermanent irritation, beyond palpable, mutual attraction. At the end of the day, she had had a great guy waiting for her call, but there he was, ruining everything, just like always, smiling and looking at her in a way that burrowed beneath her chainmail, and for the first time in what felt like a stunted lifetime, she had taken a dive, only to find herself flailing around in the shallow end.

She had been so sure that their hearts wanted each other.

She drives along the Westside Highway, her building tornado of unwanted emotions lined on one side by tall towers of city lights and the river on the other. She feels as big as a city, as stubborn as a river. She feels... cheated, and wronged. She feels stupid and embarrassed. She feels rejected. But mostly she feels blindsided, because it's not that she misunderstood her own feelings. She has not misinterpreted what had given her the courage to pull him away from his party with the intention of suggesting they take the next step. He pulled her pigtails. She has a good detective's certainty and near-sterling sense of discernment, especially of character, but he constantly makes her do a double-take. Sometimes the apparent playboy is a great, dedicated father. Sometimes the one who spouts off like it's some sort of party trick the event that has driven your whole adult life is the one who promises to be there when the killer is caught. Or brings you food and puts his hand on your shoulder when your last clue bleeds out under your hands, by your hand. Sometimes… the one who finishes your sentences is just what your story needs.

She doesn't get off at her exit, because she won't go home, not when a smooth-talking ex-wife is going to the Hamptons in her place (no, not her place; she had said no). Instead she speeds around a few perfectly innocent vehicles and drives nearly the whole length of Manhattan. She takes an exit and cuts through the ever-present maze of New York construction, circumvents a few hordes of people, some who move briskly from one late-night destination to the other with the quickness and ease of locals, others who point more and take greater note of the surrounding area, tourists who dare to see New York at night. She usually spares a reverent, heavy look towards the looming block where the Twin Towers once stood, but not tonight. The sting isn't as raw as it was in the Precinct, but there is something coursing through her veins that won't relent, that is as stubborn as she is, that is howling like a wounded beast at being deprived of what it wants. She is too distracted to feel lucky at seeing an available parking spot only a block from her destination. She cuts the corner on Cedar without waiting for the light to change and melds into the foot traffic that thrives on Broadway even at this hour. Her next motions are just as automatic, thoughtless: she emerges from Barnes & Noble with a copy of _Storm Shelter_ in her hands, holds it like an errant case file that needs to be put away, avoiding looking at it as she crosses the street and finds a seat on a bench in the graveyard of Trinity Church.

She spends all day concerned about the dead, but these tombstones sitting silently, without judgment, in the dark of the deepening night are so antiquated that they look more like movie props than markers of a life ended. They don't seem real. They can't hurt her. But neither can the book lying in wait in her palms, which have finally stopped trembling.

After looking over every other person occupying the cemetery and distracting herself with gazing at the top of the church spire that reaches so confidently for the starless sky, she contains the deep breath her body yearns to draw and looks down at the cover. She knows it well, but not in this pristine condition. She is used to slightly frayed edges, bent pages, a tiny tear that slices the letter 'H', a sticker within that reads "From the library of Katherine Beckett." But that book doesn't exist anymore. It went up in flames, and so did his signature, just a few pages deep, and the message he had written to her back before either of them knew that one day they would be of… greater use to each other.

She opens up to that page, and it's like going out with someone new. He looks like the person who once had your heart, maybe shares a haircut or a dimple, wears the same cologne, but he doesn't make you feel the same way. The difference is fundamental, chemical. There are the words "STORM SHELTER: A Derrick Storm Thriller" and his name, big and proud, just above that. She hadn't even look at her signed copy since he consulted her on their first case together, but she still remembers his John Hancock, and it's not because she's seen it on paperwork and other things over the past year. She remembers thinking he had nice penmanship – just as she'd imagined – and that his little flourish looked seasoned but practiced. She once read that Bob Dylan used to try on different clothes and stand in front of the mirror for hours trying to nail down the look he was going for; the same went for the signature, like the once-young writer had spent years crafting the perfect autograph, something that brought to attention all the desired details. Just his name, and his message, and then he returned to the haze that is the celebrity who has no idea how much he affects your individual life.

She wasn't brave enough. Maybe it was the shock of the moment, at seeing him and her together, that stilled her tongue and kept her proposition at bay. But maybe it was also the doubt. Yes, she had changed her mind about him in the last year, but then he did just as he was wont to do and surprised her. This time, the surprise lacerated, caused her to end up in a graveyard, fishing for a pen from her pocket.

She doesn't always let on what's on her mind, but he always has the right words. That should send them crashing into each other like a burst that will create a bright star, but instead they just orbit each other. The connection never holds. The kindling starts, and then a cold wind puts it out. But today she had wanted to be defiant of the elements and start a fire.

She writes with her special brand of determination that smokes out the hesitation from her hand.

_Today you started taking my orders, probably for the very first time. I didn't pick you, or so you thought. You walked away because you thought that you were doing what I wanted, and your obedience is worse than your disobedience has ever been. Maybe I've taught you some humility, curbed some of your recklessness, but now I'm sitting here so mad that you couldn't unlearn my lessons. I don't know if I'll be able to unlearn yours._

She looks at it but doesn't read it. Things she wants to say but can't, won't. She had briefly imagined going home with him tonight, ending up in his bed, in his arms, on the receiving end of the smile he had instead shone down on his beautiful, polished publisher, but instead she braces herself against a sudden breeze that ruffles her skin like a wave and accepts that maybe he is not a millionaire playboy who treats every life like a plot line, but he is a man, no more, no less, and he can only take so much. So can she.

When she does go home that night, and she's lying in bed, staring at the ceiling like a cliché, she realizes she'll only be able to sleep once the words are out. Sleep, the immediate goal, and move on, the distant dream.

And so writes to him, of what she can have of him on those pages, in his words:

_It would have been great, Castle._


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thanks so much to the few of you who expressed interest in this little piece. I've had this idea for a while now, and hopefully it all pans out accordingly. It's a little different, but it's something that I want to say - say for Beckett - and so I will.**

**Thanks especially to International08, one of my favorite ff writers and a true Titan of Castle ff. You always take the time out to give me feedback, and I can't even say how much I appreciate it. I don't know how you found my silly little stories, but it's pretty damn cool that you did. This chapter is for you.**

**Quick disclaimers: I can't actually remember at which point Beckett got a new place or where she lived after she stayed with Castle, so for the sake of the ease of the story, she already had a new place by the end of season 2. Also, I don't own these characters, because if I did, _47 Seconds_ would have ended with elevator sex.**

**If you don't mind or if you feel so inclined, drop some feedback and let me know if you like (or don't like) where this is going. Thanks ever so much!**

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><p>On Memorial Day, she decides to go to the beach. She comes about this decision after only being awake for about a half hour, sitting alone at the table, her mug poised at her lips (but the coffee within never meeting her mouth). She stares, first at nothing, but then at her new copy of <em>Storm Shelter<em> over on her coffee table, where she has left it untouched and genuinely forgotten since the night she bought it. But as soon as it has her attention, the levee breaks and a seemingly quiet morning is actually filled with brutal images of choices that have not come to pass. Tom probably still went to the family beach house down in Asbury Park, and Castle… well, it might have been easier had he not mentioned the secluded pool, or smirked at her unchecked smile that bloomed of its own volition when he suggested skinny dipping.

She had been secretly hoping it would pour, or at least be cloudy outside. One glance out the window and she swore under her breath to see the unrelenting sunshine bathing New York with its abundance. Dammit.

So she's alone – again. So she had started off the week with two handsome men clamoring for her attention and was now sitting inside on a gorgeous day off alone. She could call her dad, see what he's up to, but that almost seems worse, sadder, somehow, than this. Lanie might be free, but she still hasn't been able to face the truth of what happened, what almost happened, in the form of unfiltered honesty that is her friend, only responding to one of her light but detectably concerned text messages. In light of all this consideration, of the less-than-tempting options available and the too-tempting-ergo-mildly-devastating images stuffing her head, she changes into her new swimsuit, throws on denim shorts and a breezy cover-up, and packs a bag. After the towel, the dew-scaled water bottle, and a Ziploc bag of purple grapes are tucked within her canvas bag, she heads for the door, pretending that she won't go back for it. The ruse includes grabbing her keys and opening the door, and the quick scan of the room to make sure that she hasn't forgotten anything necessary. She's so good at pretending when it comes to Richard Castle, and she keeps it up, feigning hesitation, biting her lip, until she grabs the book like she's begrudgingly grabbing its author's hand. But she doesn't slip it into her bag. Only after she settles into her subway seat – and only after she's rubbed her thumb a little too tenderly over the spine – does she put it away, as if it's never saved her before.

She changes lines at 59th Street and takes in the normalcy of a long subway ride in which she is not alone but still very much is, one among many, a single thread weaved into the fabric of the city. The constant rumble of the train on the tracks softens her, makes her forget not just about Castle and Demming and Gina, but about everything that usually fetters her. She shuts her eyes, peeping one open when she feels the sunlight slanting through the window onto her skin to alert her that her car is going over the Manhattan Bridge. The motion, the move forward, never back… it does something to her. When she lets the thought flourish for more than a moment, it hurts, the wound still fresh, Castle's face – so undeniably happy with someone else – still plain to her memory, but this normal person activity, being one among many commuters hopping boroughs and not a stiff-necked detective, it reminds her of what it's like to be Kate. Not Detective Beckett. Not Nikki Heat. Just Kate. She watches the endless field of Brooklyn rooftops that spread out before her as the train continues its trek above ground, and before she knows it, she's reached the end of the line, her destination, and disembarks with unassuming families and groups of rowdy, happy teenagers. And she smiles. No, this certainly isn't the Hamptons, but there's just something about Coney Island that brings a genuine grin to her face for the first time since she was secure and sure enough to say, "Oh, I don't need to drink to take him."

This historic spot is not glamorous. People don't come here for a beach getaway. It's just as run down and littered as most of the rest of the city, but it has its charm. 'Castle would like it,' she thinks before she can stop herself. And she shakes her head to rid herself of that smile that lights up his face like the Strip when he's delighted and excited, but as she passes all the usual Coney Island fanfare – the tacky souvenir stands, the original Nathan's Hot Dogs, the ridiculous attractions that still, somehow, line the old boardwalk – she knows how happy he would be here, especially with her. Sharing something with her, who is usually so withholding.

Maybe that's it. She feels her grimace as she unfurls her towel along what passes for sand on the edge of Brooklyn and quickly and efficiently skims through their encounters, especially their more recent ones. All of it seems perfectly fine – good, even – until… until Demming comes into the picture. Esposito's words haunt her. They make her shiver, even on this windless, hot day, shiver with regret and longing.

She needs an escape, a release, and coming all the way down to almost New Jersey isn't enough. Her lips pursed together so tightly it's almost (purposefully) painful, she retrieves the book from her bag and attempts a comfortable reading position. She doesn't have anything to say, nothing new, just a sort of hurt she can't really put down on paper, even on paper she knows he'll never see. She lies on her stomach and props herself up on her elbows, her fingertips soaking in the faint trails of wetness left by the water bottle's proximity. She goes right to the first page and begins reading. She does so in a way not easily defined; she knows this story, might be here today because of the comfort it once gave her, but she's looking at it with new eyes. She knows the man whose face fills the book jacket photo, yet she does not apply that knowledge to her reading; nor does she act like he is a stranger, the man behind the pen, a mystery writer who is a mystery himself. She just reads, fills her head with murder, while all around her there is noise and joviality and separation.

Through his own story, she begins to forget.

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><p>She gets her own coffee at the Precinct. His damn espresso machine remains, while his chair is glaringly empty. She trains herself not to look at it, which is more difficult on the days with lots of paperwork. But the days that are filled with cases, when she barely has time to notice the chair, are still somehow worse. She closes like she normally does, as best as any mere mortal detective can, like she did before he came around, but it's not the same. No one says it as first, but it's as if someone has died. Ryan's eyes, they never were great hiding places for his thoughts and feelings, and sometimes she wants to either hit him or hug him for the look on his face like he's a little boy wondering where his father went. Esposito is better, but she can still see it, sense it. No one brings up that moment that they all saw. No one says anything that directly relates to the circumstances of his absence – just the occasional, innocent, "You know Castle once said" or "Great theory there, Castle" – but it hardly matters, because every once in a while she feels it, how they look at her like she's lost a limb, like they're wondering how long before she finally falls over.<p>

She misses him, but not enough to affect her work. He slips away, but he is Castle, so of course he finds his way back. One night in late June she thinks she hears his laugh behind her in a crowded bar and is shocked by the potency of her disappointment when it's not him. She goes home that night and grabs the book:

_I wonder how it will feel once you come back._

She ponders for a moment, already gnawed pen cap lodged between her teeth, her brow furrowed. She likes to imagine, in her better, more self-protective moments, that she can hardly remember what it was like to have him around constantly, but he's left an imprint like a hand in wet cement. Like a word on a page.

_I don't know if I want it to be different or the same. All I know is that it would be nice if it didn't hurt._

She plops down on her couch, looks around the quiet room, thinks of his invasion of and retreat from her, knowing that her shores have been forever altered.

_But you've hurt me plenty already, and more than once_.

She wants to put the book on her living room shelf so that she can pretend that it's the same as any other edition there, but it finds a way to her bedside table. She knows that she has more to say.

It's dependable, there when she wakes and there when she comes home and falls into bed, utterly exhausted. It demands nothing from her. It doesn't pester or challenge. It is content to be forgotten and willing to be needed. Only three days later she finds herself feeling morose and despondent, confused as to why, considering she and the boys solved a tough case that day. But it only takes seeing _Storm Shelter_ next to a lipstick-stained coffee mug from God knows when and a hastily written to-do list to know, to understand.

_Sharing in solving these things is better. You're good at joy. You've made it fun._

So he might know that already. But she feels it now, so strongly, the way his presence has made her realize what more is out there for the exploring and taking. Her job is tough and sometimes heartbreaking, but it has something to yield beyond justice. And she misses him, she does. But she doesn't pen that yet.

She pens it on the Fourth of July, after she sees someone reading _Heat Wave_ on the subway. She sits down to write how annoyed she is at him for coming in like a tornado and creating this character-mockery of her and then blowing back out of town to keep doing it, but she puts the tip of her pen to the spot just beside his last name and it comes out _I miss you._

Once she sees what she's done, she wants to call. She's actually aching to call. It's the big summer holiday, so she's sure he has incredible plans, flashy parties or a big barbeque or something that has his mind completely and utterly away from her, but she suddenly feels his loss so acutely that she doesn't know if she can go another night without hearing his cheerful, "Castle" when he answers her phone call. It's not necessarily romantic or sexual, but it's not completely innocent or platonic either. It's… it's just him. It's like a light's gone out, and she thought that she had grown used to her new darkness, but her eyes are now starting to smart, turn on her. She looks down at her own words and maneuvers a breath around whatever blockage fills her throat and makes herself write the truth that has to be brought out of her like a burn.

_I'm afraid you don't miss me._

Maybe he finishes Gina's sentences, too. Maybe he's working a blonde, savvy publisher into his new book. Maybe his new method of research is more… up close and personal than it was with her.

Maybe she should just close the damn book and put it on her shelf. She fills with resolve, snaps the cover shut, locks its thorny truths within. Wants to shelf it all.

But of course she doesn't. It's there at her side when she wakes up in the morning, after a night in which she dreamt of nothing but the feel of his hand on the small of her back, tracing words into her skin with his tenderly stroking thumb, restoring her brush by brush, promise by promise.

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><p>Dr. Davidson has an easily given smile. She doesn't detect a lot of pretense in him. Appreciates the way she can feel herself grinning up into her eyes when he says something clever, something that alleviates without bringing glaring attention to the fact that there is an absence in her. He is interesting as a person but uncomplicated as an option. He doesn't hurt, won't push, won't bruise, won't go where he's unwanted. But he wants her, and she can feel herself wanting him.<p>

She doesn't want this to mean something big, but she can feel how it does. She gives it a few dates before she recognizes that though the closest she ever got to closure with Castle is her insane scribbling in _Storm Shelter_, she has enough distance from his walking away and from him to proceed without a lot of pomp. Castle isn't her ex, but there's a nagging set behind the remarkable, relieving ease she feels with Josh. By doing this, she is admitting defeat. She is letting that shadowy yet strangely persistent dream slip away. And she does so calmly, strongly. Josh is kind, generous, fun. He makes her feel so normal and so desired without convoluting it, without the innuendos and the repression and the goddamn bestselling fictitious sex scenes. And he's just as busy as she is, if not more so, and so she is not overwhelmed. She can breathe, and it's good. It's so very good.

And yet something nags.

She can tell that Josh wants to sleep with her, and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't completely aroused by his touch (that, as well, is quite uncomplicated). She might have slept with him earlier on, but she realizes that _Storm Shelter_ still sits on her bedside table even though she hasn't opened it since the night before she met Josh at a dive around St. Vincent's. But seeing it one early morning, she runs her fingers through her hair and flips to his picture and the description of him, the private little window of his strange, grand world that he gives to his readership. To her. His eyes don't seem so blue in the chosen photograph. But then again, maybe her memory has colored them in stronger as his laughter has faded away.

She writes to him calmly, composed. Truthful.

_I met someone. He doesn't remind me of you._

The book goes on her shelf. She goes to Josh feeling free, welcomed emphatically, rewarded for her release of all that never was and should have been and still lingers in the absolute quiet. August is a pleasant month, full of death and sex, with no need for shelter from the storm. He doesn't call. She doesn't anticipate it, just dreams soundlessly of it. She solves her cases, unsure of what will happen in the fall. How she will feel. What she will say.

Autumn yawns over her, peeling back her skin, making ready her feelings. She thinks that when he shows up at the 12th she'll be fine, even happy to see him, eager to get back to business. But no ripples come through the pool. The wind chills, the air crisps, the scarves come out, and the leaves dance in their rebellious breaks from the trees. But only trained detectives seek out the killers of New York. The chair beside her desk is empty.

Something nags, but she doesn't write. If he doesn't call, she has nothing to say.


End file.
